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04 Mar 2015 8:37:42am

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Mel,

Sure I know that Dawkins and Hitchens have occasionally been allowed to get away with a fair bit by their supporters, but I'd say that McGrath is as I put it earlier likewise preaching to the choir. Arguments from his version of rationality while civilised are nevertheless fairly unpersuasive especially as we're familiar with various versions of the same from other quarters. They seem in effect to walk right up to the brink of recognition of one another and then at the point where our knowledge can take us no further either side can be accused of inserting their own self serving opinion. If religious folks choose to make a leap of faith then atheists would ask that they be intellectually honest about taking that step rather than pass it off as part of rationality.

My preference for tolerant discourse would be misplaced if I didn't think a good deal of rationality was held in common, but I view that in a kind of chicken and egg fashion. What it seems most consistent with to me, looking at the range of religions we've proposed or followed throughout human history, is that religion was among our first attempts to explain the world in ways that we've since improved upon. It seems to me to be inescapable that the option without the deity has the greatest emphasis on rationality, relying pretty well entirely upon the view that there has to be a rational explanation for everything. What occurs then is that it can be pointed out that we don't know what those explanations are. Hence what the new atheists call a god of the gaps argument is entertained with scientists of a certain persuasion (such as Sam Harris who we were recently discussing), apt to try and close some of those gaps as is science's imperative. I'm far from arrogant enough to simply presume that it is even possible to close all the gaps, but I will say that what really matters probably isn't so much an understanding of facts so much as an appreciation for how they should best be used.

The religious view seems to be that certainty is comforting and therefore desirable hence figurative language about being part of the flock etc. A more enlightened point of view that I support is that certainty means the end of a journey in which one can have free agency. To use the common tautology absolute certainty means a world of absolutes, of complete determinism that renders knowledge useless to us and the living of a good life pointless. I find that prospect both inconsistent with experience and stupefyingly undesirable.